Trump "lawyer" Rudy Giuliani spent his morning on the Sunday show circuit. This was almost certainly a bad idea, but (1) Rudy Giuliani would push his own mother down a flight of stairs for an extra five minutes on television and (2) at this point it is evident that whenever someone in the Donald Trump orbit says "lawyer" they really mean "publicist." Rudy Giuliani is not going on the Sunday shows because he believes it will help Donald Trump's legal position, as federal and state prosecutors investigate, at this point, every organization in which Trump has played a major role over the last decade. Rudy Giuliani is going on the Sunday shows in an attempt to craft a political defense of Trump, an attempt to convince pundits and the public that holding Trump to account for those crimes would be, itself, a political act, and too great a price for the nation to bear.
It did not go well. On ABC's This Week, Giuliani seemed willing to admit that then-Trump dealmaker Michael Cohen had continued to pursue a high-level deal to construct a "Trump Tower" in Moscow—a deal that would have required the involvement of the Putin government—right up to the weeks of the election.
On whether Trump confidant Roger Stone gave the campaign a "heads-up" on upcoming Wikileaks-leaked material obtained from Russian spies, Giuliani suggested that while he didn't "believe" it happened, "that's not a crime."
And on whether his client, Donald Trump, is a raging liar who's word cannot be trusted:
Just how untenable Giuliani's positions are getting even on the excruciatingly safe Sunday shows? We'll have to head over to the Fox News pillow fort for an answer to that. And when it comes to whether Trump himself directed the hush money payments to two women with whom Trump had affairs, even Fox News hosts are getting tired of Rudy's game.
“We’re talking about something that doesn’t matter,” Giuliani said. “Whether it happened or it didn’t happen, it’s not illegal.”
[Host Chris Wallace] interrupted, “You’re moving shells around on me. Either it happened or it didn’t happen.” But Giuliani defended himself by claiming, “That’s what lawyers do all the time.”
“I’m asking you for the truth, sir,” said Wallace, visibly frustrated by the circular exchange.
At this point, Trump's legal team appears to have given up on pretending Trump is anything other than a shameless liar who, in fact, did something close to all the things he has been accused of. Rudy has instead been boxed into basing his remaining arguments on convincing the public that none of those things are technically crimes because reasons, and the things that are very very explicitly technically crimes are of such little consequence that it would be an outrage for prosecutors to do anything about them.
It is not likely to have any effect whatsoever on federal and state prosecutors, who for the most parts are not idiots. It is instead Rudy Giuliani's last-ditch attempt to suggest that his client is so very important that holding him responsible for criminal actions would bring the very republic to it's knees.
It's only wee little crimes, here and there, after all. A minor conspiracy with the Russian government. A piffling criminal conspiracy with a crooked publishing company to cover up unflattering information by swindling those that might have come forward. A thoroughly banal effort to interfere with a federal counterintelligence investigation. As the people in Donald Trump's and Rudy Giuliani's orbits tend to do, apparently, all the time.